Drive the New Grand Parkway for Free! (...for One Week)

Life is about to get a whole lot easier for commuters in northwest Harris County with a huge stretch of the Grand Parkway linking the 'burbs about to go online.

On Friday the Texas Department of Transportation toured reporters around two massive new segments of the Grand Parkway (officially called “F1” and “F2”), which is set to open for drivers on February 8. And here's the kinda cool part: You can drive it for free, at least for that first week. Tolls won't kick in, officials say, until February 15.

For local and county officials, this has been a pretty long wait – and for drivers dealing with increasingly awful traffic in Houston's booming suburbs. The sections that TxDOT just finished will stretch from US 290 in Cypress to I-45 in Spring, totaling some 24 miles. In a statement Friday, Texas Transportation Commission vice chairman Jeff Moseley called the new section a “critical milestone” in the Grand Parkway project, which has been in the planning stages since the early 1960s.

TxDOT says the next segment, from I-45 to US 59 near Humble, should be ready for drivers by the end of March.